Cheese Lasagna

Cheese Lasagna is easy to prepare. Like me you might not have a pasta machine to make  nice thin lasagna noodles but it’s easy and fairly quick to make your own ricotta cheese. The TASTE of home made ricotta makes a world of difference to this dish. I recommend making your own ricotta cheese especially if you live in areas that only sell very processed tasting ricotta cheese. So go for it. I make my tomato sauce free style in very large batches that I freeze so your going to have to use your favorite tomato sauce with this recipe. Leftovers freeze well. My photo just doesn’t do this lasagna justice. You can’t taste the fresh,  just right, light creamy cheese with great flavor that you won’t find at most restaurants. You can do no wrong when you make a lasagna that taste Forking Great like this one.

Ingredients for about 12 servings

1 gallon whole milk

1 pint heavy cream

3 lemons (just the fresh squeezed juice)

1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt

1/2 cup parmesan cheese – shredded

about eight grates fresh nutmeg

big pinch white pepper

1/4 + 1 pinch teaspoon dried oregano (the 1 pinch is used near the end)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt

1 XL egg

1 lb lasagna noodles

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

non stick spray

7 cups tomato sauce (maybe more)

1 cup Italian Blend cheese – shredded

Directions

In a large pot on medium heat add the milk, cream, 1 teaspoon of salt. Stir occasionally and bring to rolling boil this will take about an hour. During this time and latter you might have to slightly lower the heat to prevent a boil over. Once the pot is at a rolling boil very SLOWLY add the lemon juice till the mixture curdles. Let it stay on the heat just a few more minutes and then drain in a mesh colander. The mixture should be thick. Set to the side and wash out the pot and use to boil the lasagna noodles.

Boil the lasagna noodles two minutes less than the box suggest in salted water. When the lasagna noodles are done first drain them and then dump them in a bowl and sprinkle the olive oil on the noodles and shake the bowl around. The olive oil flavors the noodles and it also prevents them from sticking.

Go back to the cheese bowl it will be cooler now and add the parmesan cheese, nutmeg, white pepper, oregano, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and the egg. Mix Well.

Build the Lasagna.

In your non-stick sprayed pan you start with one cup of sauce and then start lying down the lasagna noodles. You top the noodles with a cup of sauce.

Then you add half your cheese mixture. Top with some torn basil and another cup of sauce.

Noodle it up again putting the noodles in the other direction.

Top the noodles with another cup of sauce.

Add the rest of the ricotta mixture. Top the ricotta mixture with another cup of sauce. Then top the sauce with fresh torn basil leaves and top that with a blend of Italian cheeses. Top this with a cup of sauce and Put the top layer of noodles on.

Cover the pan tightly with non -stick spray (spray goes on the inside against the sauce so it doesn’t stick).

The pan goes in a 350 degree oven for 75 minutes.

After 75 minutes that the pan out of the oven, remove the foil,  and let it cool some on the counter.

Wrap it with plastic wrap and let in sit over night in the refrigerator to set.

Cut what you need for dinner and the extra can be frozen for latter use.

For reheating you might want to top the lasagna with a little more sauce. You might or might not want to add more Italian blend cheese.

I serve the lasagna with a little more sauce and serve with shredded hard Italian Cheese.

Cheese Lasagna

This is one Forking GREAT Lasagna!

The Forking Truth

Sweet Potatoes with Cherry peppers, Figs, Green Onions and Balsamic Drizzle

Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Scallions, Calabrian Chile, Figs with Reduced Balsamic

I came across this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi for these Roasted Sweet Potatoes called Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Figs. After I read the recipe I thought about how interesting and different it was. I thought it was great because it wasn’t too sweet. It seems almost every recipe written for sweet potatoes just sweetens them more. Most of my life I have eaten sweet potatoes with just butter because I want my dessert to be sweet and not my potatoes. I served these similar potatoes last year for Thanksgiving and most people who tried them enjoyed them so I did these potatoes similar this year but used Calabrian Chiles instead of tame cherry peppers.

It very easy to prepare this dish. I didn’t follow Y.O. & S.T. Recipe exactly because it was very simple so I winged it.

Use however many sweet potatoes you need and cut them into wedges. In my photo is only two sweet potatoes.

Lightly dress them in olive oil and spread them out on a non-stick sprayed baking sheet in a 425 degree F oven for about 20 minutes.

Add fresh ground sea salt and black pepper

On another baking sheet

Add figs cut in bite size pieces. some scallions in bite size pieces and some chiles of your choice. Cut mild chiles in thin rings. Chop hot chiles in small pieces. lightly drizzle with olive oil.

I put these on a baking sheet in a 350 degree F oven for about 15 minutes.

Added a small amount of fresh ground sea salt and black pepper.

Then I combined pans.

I used a better quality reduced balsamic vinegar and drizzled everything.

You can just easily reduce your own vinegar but it’s horrible to remove from a pot. I scrubbed and scrubbed and I thought my pot was ruined. It really was next to impossible to remove the residue of balsamic vinegar. I don’t recommend reducing vinegar unless you are using a non stick pot and even then I’m still not sure. Also the already made reduced vinegars differ greatly in quality. At the moment the one I like best is called “Fini” It’s the only reduced Balsamic that is 90% reduced balsamic without weird ingredients mixed in. I found Fini at World Market Store.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Green Onions, Calabrian Chili, Figs with Reduced Balsamic

A brilliant way to do sweet potatoes!

The Forking Truth